


Cat Got Your . . .

by Winterchild85



Category: Penny Dreadful (TV)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-11-26
Updated: 2014-11-26
Packaged: 2018-02-27 02:34:06
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,106
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2675696
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Winterchild85/pseuds/Winterchild85
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sir Malcolm goes out for a night of diversion</p>
            </blockquote>





	Cat Got Your . . .

The decor was opulent, almost elegant, just a trifle gauche, but it was a brothel, after all. Mrs, Teague ran a discrete, clean establishment, even better, she knew what Sir Malcolm liked. She knew he had a taste for a touch of the exotic, women who were almost white -- but not quite.

Malcolm watched the young woman intended for him descend the stairs. She was perfect, or more precisely, perfectly to his tastes. The was the air of North Africa about her. She was wonderfully slender, but with a hint of the voluptuous, with an impossibly feline grace. Her face, too, was feline with slightly tilted gold-green eyes. Her dark hair was elaborately looped and held in place by a golden comb decorated with a blue lotus. She wore an astonishingly pleated and draped evening gown of green linen. She glided toward him and said, “Sir Malcolm, Mrs. Teague has a room prepared. Please come with me.”

Malcolm took her proffered slim hand. “My dear, what is your name.”

“Mariam, but you may call me what you choose.”

“Curious, I knew a Mariam many years ago. She was Egyptian.”

“I too, am Egyptian. It is not an uncommon name. Am I like the Mariam of your memory?”

“Similar, but you are delightfully different. And, no doubt, decidedly yourself.”

“I can be anything you wish.” She tilted her head in a kittenish smile at Sir Malcolm.

Malcolm followed her up the stairs to a private room. Once inside, Mariam smoothed her gloves in a feline gesture before taking them off. She pulled the comb and the lotus from her hair, before holding it to her nose to inhale the scent. She held it out to Malcolm, “The Egyptian blue lotus, the sacred water lily.”

Malcolm replied, “I have seen them growing along the banks of the Nile.” He pulled Mariam toward him in a kiss, clutching the mass of her hair that tumbled down her back, and crushing the lily between them.

He noticed she smelled of water lilies as she leaned toward loosen his cravat and unbutton his waistcoat.. She teased along his jaw with her kitten teeth, Malcolm watched her, transfixed, as she drifted to a table. Mariam poured two glasses of wine through a strainer from a carafe, in which fragments of a blue lotus drifted. She offered a glass to him.

It was a white wine made bitter by the plant. The taste wasn’t unpleasant, just a note of bitterness under the astringency of the wine. He drained the glass. Mariam kissed him, and slipped something from her mouth to his. It was the center of the water lily. Malcolm chewed and swallowed, It tasted almost like an artichoke heart preserved in vinegar. He swept the girl up and lifted her onto the bed.

Malcolm noticed a pleasant warm feeling about his head and neck, there was also the most indescribable feeling of euphoria. He felt light, and happy, and had an unusual sense of awareness. He experienced the girl’s delightful and expert use of her teeth and nails. Strange, it was like enjoying being devoured.

He saw the blue lotus and heard Mariam’s voice explaining that the flower was like sky. The petals were pale blue at their pointed ends, phasing into light mauve, to the yellow center of the blossom. Like Ra illuminating the daylight sky.

In the golden center Malcolm saw the blond heads of Mina and Peter as the played on the lawn, solemn little dark-haired Vanessa watching them, joining in when she choose. His vision rose up above the grounds of his country house. He was looking down on the garden maze, against an obelisk he and Claire were coupling, he felt he was there with her, in her. He turned his head at a slight rustle to look into the eyes of Vanessa. Except it was Vanessa as she was now, Vanessa the woman. He smiled at her and she returned a cold, reptilian smile that chilled him to his soul.

Mariam stroked his face and she whispered to him in a strange language of which he had no knowledge, but yet, he understood. “There was a mysterious seductress who is a priestess of Baast. She seduced Prince Setna, saying to him: Be joyful, my sweet lord, for I am destined to be your bride. But remember that I am no common woman but the child of Baast the Beautiful, and I cannot endure a rival. 'Before we are wed, write me a scroll of divorcement against your present wife. And also write that you give your children to me to be slain and thrown down to the cats of Baast, as I cannot endure that they shall live and perhaps plot evil against our children.'”

Malcolm was floating over the Nile. He saw blue and white water lilies in the shallows next to the banks. He floated higher and saw the boats, higher still and he began to see the great river’s course spread before him like a map. He was traveling south past the cataracts, past the Great Bend of the Nile, where once the now gone Yellow Nile had joined it. Malcolm could see the lost river. He drifted on to Khartoum, where the Blue Nile, with its massive flow, joined the White Nile. He followed the river south the desert gave way to green lands. He was over Lake Victoria now. Malcolm knew in his bones that Speke was wrong. This was not the source of the Nile. The great river flowed through the lake and did not originate from it. In the hills beyond were the springs which gave birth to the mighty Nile. He was almost there . . . he could almost see them . . . 

Then it stopped. Malcolm’s awareness was abruptly slammed into his body. He was aware of the ticking of a mantle clock, his ragged breathing, Mariam’s eyes glowing in the dark . . .

He remembered Zanzibar and another Mariam, the first Mariam, whose eyes glowed golden in the darkened room. The smell of spices and the sea, the floral scent of her hair, the musky smell of their bodies and chanting in some ancient language. The voice belong to Mariam in London? No, was it the first Mariam? No, it was — Madame Kali. It was she, reciting in a sing-song voice: “Does he know about his far-born son, who is hidden, unseen, although the deed was done, and he has his father’s eyes of agate green.”

Sir Malcolm awoke hours later in an empty room. There was only the ticking of a clock and a sleek black cat preening near the window.


End file.
